idea of wanting a bigger piece of the pie.”
“‘Gatsby’s Tennis Nets,’” Fishburne
said, reading a tag aloud.
On a counter in front, a wooden box
displayed a mysterious object: ivory-like,
rounded, and carved with dancing skel-
etons. The visitors leaned in. “I was clean-
ing out an apartment, and I said, ‘Oh,
nice bowl,’ right?” Lerner said. “Then I
turned it over and said, ‘Holy crap.’”
“It’s a turtle shell,” Fishburne said.
“It’s the top of somebody’s skull,” Ler-
ner said.
“Holy shit!” Criss said. “That is
intense!”
“It’s a real kapala, from Tibet,” Ler-
ner said. “They drank blood out of that
thing.” Fishburne picked up the kapala
and put it on his head. Actors, skull: Had
anybody done “Hamlet”?
“I did the famous speech at my high-
school graduation,” Fishburne said.
“To be or not to be, that is the ques-
tion,” Criss said.
“I like ‘O, what a rogue,’ I like ‘O, that
this too, too solid flesh,’” Rockwell said.
“I think those are funner.”
“Shakespeare and Mamet, to me, are
extremely similar,” Criss said. He com-
pared the musicality to a Coltrane riff.
“Even though it’s a bunch of dudes
saying dirty words, they’re actually ex-
tremely vulnerable,” Rockwell said.
“The junk shop is a fence, it’s a front,
it’s a clubhouse,” Pepe said.
“It’s their home,” Fishburne said.
“When you start digging, you realize, Oh,
yeah—this is very sweet.”
—Sarah Larson
something subtle, like a $15 million town-
house in Park Slope.” Upper East Side:
“Get a little crusty white dog that’s not
that cute. Name it Tabitha.” Beverly Hills:
“Oddly enough, a lot of people in Bev-
erly Hills have absolutely no taste...a
few lion statues out front never hurt.”)
“It’s half satire, half aspirational,” she
said, setting off on her daily “rich-mom
walk” through Beverly Hills, where she
lives. “Everybody hates the rich mom,
the archetypal anal woman who doesn’t
eat carbs and has the five-thousand-dol-
lar stroller, but they’ll also say, ‘Ooh, I
go to the same coffee shop as her.’ It’s
the last group of people that you can
safely poke fun at.”
Najjar grew up in London, the daugh-
ter of an expat corporate lawyer, and at-
tended Stanford and Parsons. “I used to
take pictures of my outfits and describe
them in funny ways, come up with these
rich-mom characters,” she said. “It started
in grad school, when all my friends had
these cool, high-powered jobs and I was
crying in a coffee shop in Tribeca, try-
ing to write a paper.”
Every Monday and Thursday, she in-
vites her Instagram followers to “Ask
Me Anything,” addressing such topics
as how to deal with dating burnout
(“Take a break,” but “set a time limit”),
which Nobu is the best Nobu (“Mal-
ibu”), and what to do when you see your
ex for the first time after breaking up
(“Shove them into a bush”). Najjar types
each answer in a bold, sans-serif font
and posts it on her Instagram account.
“I took a few psych classes at Stan-
ford, but nothing serious,” she said. (She
majored in English, which, she has said,
taught her “how to bullshit.”) She added,
“My whole ethos is, if you have a room-
ful of women and someone has a prob-
lem, someone in that room has the an-
swer. It’s about sharing information.”
She went on, “If I can save a girl three
weeks of feeling crummy about a fuck
boy she’s dating, or if I can give some-
one advice so they don’t waste money
on a face product, that’s a win.”
At a coffee shop, Najjar ordered an
iced Americano and prepared to address
the day’s A.M.A. “I’ll get upwards of
ten thousand questions within twenty-
four hours,” she said. On her phone
screen was a grid of pink squares, digi-
tal Post-its: “Can I ask someone on a
“ Your Easter bonuses are hidden throughout corporate headquarters.” same-day date?” “Any advice for apart-1
L.A.POSTCARD
ASKHERANYTHING
A
few months ago, the C.E.O. of
Poggio Labs, a San Francisco soft-
ware company, sounded an alarm. “If
you’re a straight guy aged 25 to 35,” he
tweeted, women are judging you “based
on a set of standards created by a per-
son named tinx.” The arbiter’s full name
is Christina Najjar; as a teen-ager she
adopted the name Tinx, which is how
her nearly two million social-media fol-
lowers know her. “They’re mostly
women,” she said the other day. She wore
a green sweatshirt, gray leggings, and
cantaloupe-colored wrist weights. “They
have disposable income and want to
know how to spend it. They want to
have margaritas and wake up at 6 a.m.
and go to a workout. They don’t want to
be dicked around by fuck boys.”
A former freelance writer, Najjar, who
is thirty-one, joined TikTok in 2020. “I
was, like, I don’t give a shit anymore,” she
said. “I’m hungover and alone. I’m going
to make some TikToks, because other-
wise my only interaction will be with my
Amazon devices.” She satirized alterna-
tive-milk adherents, “basic” New York
millennials, and rich moms, describing
how they might acclimate to various re-
gions. (Brooklyn: “You’re going to need